Observations on the changes produced in the blood &c / by Charles J.B. Williams.

Date:
[1835]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the changes produced in the blood &c / by Charles J.B. Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ON THE CHANGES PRODUCED IN THE BLOOD IN THE COURSE OF ITS CIRCULATION: WITH EXPERIMENTS. Head to llie Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh in 1823*. WITH ADDITIONS AND REMARKS ON DISCO- VERIES AND OPINIONS SUBSEQUENTLY PUBLISHED. ByCuas.J. B. Williams, M.D. F.It.S. &c. This essay is designed to comprehend a consideration of’ those changes in the proximate principles of the blood that arc the result of the several organic functions of circulation, respiration, and secretion. Before we can satisfactorily enter on this subject, it will be necessary to examine briefly the general com- position of the blood in health. On the Composition of the Blood. Since the researches of Berzelius, Marcct, and Brandc (for I think it un- necessary to detail opinions of an earlier date), the blood has been considered as a rather complex fluid, containing at least four animal principles, namely, al- bumen, fi brine, a peculiar colouring matter, and an imperfectly defined mat- ter, usually called extractive; the rest consists of water, holding in solution a quantity of saline matter. l,e recent analyses of Lecanuf, Berzelius {, and Babington, give a kind * In this essay will be found several opinions which have since been brought forward as new by others. It formed the subject of a thesis pub- lished in Lutin in 1824 ; and in 1S26 an abstract of it was published in the Transactions of the Medico-Chirnrgical Society of Edinburgh. The additions are enclosed in brackets, t Ann. de Chimie et Physique, xlviii. t Traitede Chimie, 1833,t.vii. of fatty matter as a constant ingredient in the blood, which, according to the former chemist, contains five or six parts in a thousand; part of it is solid and crystalline,like cuolesterine, and the re- mainder oily and saponifiable. This dis- covery throws some light on the deposi- tion and removal of fat in the body*'. This fatty matter, when in excess, gives a milky hue to the serum; and in a case examined by Dr. Christison, it amounted to five per cent, f] It would be convenient, for the illus- tration of the questions we are entering on, to consider the blood as a homoge- neous compound of the substances here enumerated, without allusion to the spontaneous separation which occurs when it is removed from the body; but since almost every writer has treated of the constituents as presented distinctly by this phenomenon, we shall briefly advert to it. Blood, witbin a few minutes after its abstraction from a vessel (the time be- ing liable to some variation from the in- fluence of several circumstances), begins to exhibit a number of small coagula near the surface, which, by extending and cohering, gradually form one con- tinuous stratum of weak aggregation. The blood below is shortly coagulated in like manner, and the whole mass ap- pears then to have undergone a change. Presently, however, the edges of the coagulum on the surface begin to re- cede from the sides of the containing vessel; the size diminishing, and the consistence increasing, until, in the course of some hours, the blood presents the perfect separation into crassamen- tum and serum. This phenomenon has been generally attributed to the soli- dification of the fibrinous part of the blood, which entangles the colouring • See the writer’s Essay on Obesity, in the Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine, t Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. April, 1830.